Leadership Circle

Have you faced a situation where many of the projects/ programs of the organization running on track because they are led by good leaders however these leaders were burning themselves due to lack of leadership / ownership type of support from the team under them and there are associates who want to lead but have no leadership experience and hence can not be deployed in leadership roles in projects. It is a time bomb ticking and one snap can lead to a major problem for a customer. You are looking for a solution to build the leadership capability at every level in the organization which is,

• Scalable to be used with large mass of consultants at medium to junior level,
• Has a good pull (It cannot be forced on to anyone),
• Is able to provide leadership experience beyond any theoretical knowledge,
• Is cost effective

“Leadership Circle” , which has inspiration from Quality Circle movement, is the solution for the same. 

  

Leadership Circle is a group people who want to become leaders in whatever work they are doing coming together. The typical size of a Leadership Circle is @ 7-8 people comprising at least one mentor. They meet once a week for an hour to discuss various topics like

• What it takes to become a leader,
•  See videos, listen to various leaders in person
• Discuss key learnings from various leadership books and how the team intends to use them or have used them
• Present various situations at their workplace and deliberate possible way to lead in these situations,
• Identify real projects to experiment the learning
• Execute the projects and present learning in the circle

There is no relationship between leadership circle and performance management system within organization. It is expected that results will automatically be seen in the regular work performed by these consultants and reflect in their performance review. This is a voluntary participation initiative and no special concessions accorded for participation.    

Key observations and experience from running Leadership Circle is collated in a few points:

• These are open and semi-structured meetings. The outcome depends on acceptance of this mechanism and participation. Typically the team participating in Leadership Circle is used to get the instructions from their leaders and execute them and not used to make decisions. Mentor needs to play a big role here to coach the team through different methods.
• One of the critical thing which takes a very long time is, to internalize the key aspects of leadership. It was very easy to describe what qualities a leader should have from various books, articles; however doing an introspection to check where one stands on each of them, accept shortcoming and consciously take efforts to build them, was very difficult for many. Mentor needed to take the team slowly on right path, once they understood how to inspire themselves to learn new capabilities; we have achieved a major milestone.
• Sometimes members are sensitive about identifying problems within them for the fear of adverse action from the organization as a result they find difficulty in their improvement. It is important from mentor’s side to provide that confidence that nothing disclosed in the circle goes in to any of the HR records. Once team gets this confidence, they start opening up and positive results start showing up.
• The success of this program depends on self-driven efforts by individual and each person progresses at his or her unique speed. There will be some drop outs and one needs to be prepared for the same.
• Providing some kind of experience of “leading” in everything the circle does is key. Devising simple rules like each circle meeting would be led by a different individual every meeting helped. He/she will have complete freedom to design the meeting and conduct the same within a base framework. He/ She will intimate others in advance if it is expected that team should be prepared in specific area for the meeting. Many members were confused how to do this, many of them continuously sought validation from Mentors, many were hesitant to establish protocol for their meeting. Mentors helped the specific individuals and after a couple of months this protocol started working nicely.
• Identification of projects for the team to experiment within organization was important and I want to talk about one project of conducting an organization wide competition. The project was assigned to one of the leadership circle team. They did everything from conceptualization, presenting the concept to management, get budgetary approvals, creating theme and detailed design for competition and popularize the same within the organization, generating some additional volunteers to help them run the competition, actually run the competition, identifying the right panel of judges, get the entries evaluated and finally organize a prize distribution for the same. This was a big challenge as none of the faces from this team were familiar to the larger audience (barring a small group of friends of each member) within the organization. Team worked hard, faltered a few times, mentors spent some good time with the team in terms of guidance only (no actual participation in any of the activities). There was significant hard work but the team had first hand experience as to when they own something, what all things they need to do to complete the same. Big change was observed in circle members in the way they started looking at things they are doing in day to day work life.    
• As a result of such successes, confidence levels of the members increased tremendously and aspirations for taking such challenges in professional life also increased. This was expected result and we were happy about the same.       

Many members were happy on personal level that they now understand what it really meant by “Leader” and they have experienced the same in some or other capacity. They also feel nice that they have a peer forum where they can discuss some problem they might be facing on the work front and find a solution.

This initiative is like a movement and takes time to provide results. However when the results come, they are really beneficial to organization as well as individual.

Keys for Success of Leadership Circle:

• Visible support from Management for this initiative. Teams put in efforts on their own to build their leadership quality and demonstrate them through various projects they undertake; this should be recognized and supported
• It is a voluntary initiative and the results depend on the drive each person has. So it is critical to have at least 5-6 persons out of 7-8 with passion to lead while beginning a circle.
• The success of this initiative depends on the “Mentor”. Higher investment from mentor’s side better are the results. It is important to have a mentor for this Circle from business (not from HR) who is somewhat recognized as leader within the organization at least at some level and understands that he/she needs to “mentor” and “not to lead” this team. A battery of good mentors is critical for success.
• Organization should help this initiative with identifying various projects that these teams can take and execute to gain experience of leading. There is always an apprehension to use any customer projects for experimenting so all the internal initiatives could be run through these circles and can bring in the experience portion to the team.
• Based on the observed performance, some of the team members should be assigned to some leadership roles within the project world to provide a clear signal that organization is serious about this initiative and if they find some good talent, they will pick it up for better roles. Few members do start aspiring for a better role as their confidence improves and there is always a risk of they looking out for leadership opportunities if not provided in-house. This aspect needs to be managed well and business leaders becoming mentors helps in this aspect.
• It is important to remember that the idea of this initiative is not to create more project managers but to create a leader who in any capacity can lead when needed and measurement of its success should be with the same yardstick. It is more like a movement and not a focused training.
•  Leadership Circle takes some time to see results and it is important to have patience from mentors as well as team members

Leadership Circle is the right movement that every organization should embrace to build the leaders within.